Wednesday, August 31, 2011

As you may have heard, things are starting to look a little different across many Google products—and today, Blogger is the next product to get a makeover. It’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics. We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time.

Apple would love us to believe it's all "Eureka." But Apple produces 10 pixel-perfect prototypes for each feature. They compete — and are winnowed down to three, then one, resulting in a highly evolved winner. Because Apple knows the more you compete inside, the less you'll have to compete outside.

We are all mesmerized by Apple's beautiful design, from device to screen, to the packaging itself. We see what the magicians want us to see. What we don't see is the 18 months of negotiating with the music companies. Nor the three years of teaching the supply chain that the Macbook Air had to be really thin, really light, and really enduring (10-hour battery). When those improvements intersected with the iPhone's great screen technology, the iPad (that glorious Air/iPhone hybrid) exploded.

I wonder if the company is also trying to appease the Taiwanese factories that were stuck with parts of perhaps another 100,000 TouchPads, according to a DigiTimes story. It said HP was going to honor its commitments to its Taiwanese partners, who also manufacture its computers.

The DigiTimes story said the parts were for a 7-inch model of the TouchPad that wasn't released before HP scuttled the line.

Pressing its case that the desktop is moving away from the center of computing, VMware Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod gave attendees at the annual VMworld conference here today a glimpse at a technology the company is developing that will let workers access Windows applications regardless of the type of device they're using or the operating system it runs.

Herrod built on the post-PC era theme VMware's Chief Executive Paul Maritz laid out in his keynote address at the conference yesterday. Herrod showed off technology from VMware's labs, some of which is being released today, that lets corporate tech managers simply provision applications--such as Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software--to employees to use on iPads,Android phones, as well as their Windows desktops.

It appears that online retail giant Amazon will launch a new, vastly improved version of its massively popular shopping website in the near future, overhauling its design that not only looks great on the desktop but has been designed to appeal to tablet owners, signalling that the company could soon announce the launch of its own tablet devices.

Only a small number of users have been granted access to the new design, some of which have voiced their surprise on Twitter, which now sports big tablet-friendly buttons and a bigger, more prominent, search bar.

If Google refines this extension to support both Blogger and Google+, it could become a Windows Live Writer competitor.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to +1 a web page, but the site hasn’t yet installed the +1 button? I know I have... =] We now have a solution for you: the +1 extension for Chrome! Once you install the extension, you’ll be able to +1 any page you visit on the web! It doesn’t yet have the ability to share to Google+, but we’ll automatically update it over time after you install it. So be on the lookout for new +1-tastic features in the future. Give the extension a try and write a review in the Chrome Web Store to let us know what you think. You can find it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jgoepmocgafhnchmokaimcmlojpnlkhp

The amount of time U.S. users spend on Google Inc.’s new social network has grown more slowly in recent weeks, according to Experian Hitwise, indicating that the service may struggle to make headway against Facebook Inc.

Users on average spent 5 minutes and 47 seconds on Google+ during the week ended Aug. 27, up about 4 percent from the previous week, according to Experian Hitwise, which tracks Internet statistics. Time spent on the site peaked in the week of July 16, at 5 minutes, 50 seconds, Hitwise said.

Third is Chatter Connect, which is intended to entice software developers to work Chatter into other other enterprise applications which many people think are where the real action is in the social enterprise field. Ask the soon-to-be-public Jive Software, which can add social features to, among other applications, Microsoft Office. There’s also Yammer, which grabs social feeds from any application that has them, including, uh, Chatter. It’s not the newest idea under the sun, but Salesforce is off to a respectable start: Its first conquest is Microsoft’s collaboration software Sharepoint.

Barnes & Noble Inc., the largest US bookstore chain, rose the most in more than three months after posting a smaller quarterly loss and projecting revenue for its Nook e-reader to more than double this year. The net loss narrowed to $56.6 million, or 99 cents a share. Barnes & Noble has sacrificed profits to invest in transitioning into a digital-content provider through its Nook e-readers.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

We’re excited to announce a new way for readers to connect with authors and engage in the community around their favorite authors’ books. @author lets readers ask questions while they’re reading a Kindle book, or from an Amazon Author Page. You can see below which authors are participating in our beta release.

To ask one of these authors a question from a Kindle book, just highlight a passage using the 5-way controller, type “@author” followed by your question, and Share. We’ll tweet the question to the author and post it on the Author Page; you’ll automatically receive an email if the author answers your question.

The first database supported by VMware is PostgreSQL, though McJannet said that other databases would be added over time. As to why VMware is supporting PostgreSQL first, McJannet noted that it's an open source technology with a long history of mission critical customer adoption.

"We really do believe that PostgreSQL with its vibrant community and heritage of critical usage is a very good database for this purpose," McJannet said.

From a competitive perspective, VMware is also stressing how the new vFabric Data Connector is different than simply using the Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service).

"The real distinction between us and Amazon is that our service is about enabling database-as-a-service for the enterprise," McJannet said. "This is something that the enterprises can create on its own for internal uses."

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.

The problem is that in the real world of business, pricing has to bear some relationship to cost. No one is going to beat the iPad by building a product of equal performance and quality for less. Apple has mastered the supply chain and, with sales of the iPad in the area of a million units a week, achieves considerable economies of scale. It’s in the rare and wonderful position of offering a premium product while actually enjoying a cost advantage over competitors.

That means that no one can hope to compete with Apple simply by offering a product similar to the iPad for less. If Apple were to perceive it as a threat, they could underprice the interloper while feeling less pain than the competition. It’s a game that only Apple can win.

His conclusion was, not so smart, but not for the reasons you might think. “Full connectivity in a social network sometimes can hinder collective action,” he writes.

To put it another way, all the Twitter posting, texting and Facebook wall-posting is great for organizing and spreading a message of protest, but it can also spread a message of caution, delay, confusion or, I don’t have time for all this politics, did you see what Lady Gaga is wearing?

The idea of a post-PC era runs counter to the vision Microsoft likes to promulgate. Earlier this month, Microsoft PR boss Frank Show sought to debunk the post-PC era meme, blogging that "PC plus" would be a better term.

Austrian blogger and developer Florian Rohrweck recently discovered a lot of Google+’s upcoming features just by digging around in the source code for the new social networking service. He was one of the first (but not the only one), to reveal Google+ Games before its launch, for example, as well as still unreleased features like “Shared Circles” and social search, amongotherthings.

Now, it seems, Google has had enough of Rohrweck’s snooping. It’s hiring Rohrweck to help secure the code instead.

Collaboration is one of Cisco's five company priorities and represents what Cisco believes to be a total addressable market of $45 billion. The acquisition will provide more opportunity for Cisco partners to provide enhanced collaboration solutions to customers. Versly's software will be integrated into a variety of Cisco's collaboration offerings including Cisco Quad, Cisco Jabber and Cisco WebEx. For example, users will be able to receive automatic notifications within Cisco Quad when the content of a document has changed, escalate from simply reviewing a document to an instant messaging session through Cisco Jabber, or initiate a web conferencing session from a presentation through Cisco WebEx.

"With this acquisition we are gaining strong talent and innovative technology that builds on Cisco's successful collaboration platform," said Ned Hooper, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Cisco. "We continue to expand our collaboration architecture to change the way businesses work."

While some may view a partnership with Google as an asset, we see it as a challenge. Product strategists that we’ve spoken with at OEMs have voiced frustration about the limits of Android — its lack of polish, the terrible shopping experience in the Android Market, the rules that Google has set for Honeycomb use that limit differentiation, and the fragmentation of earlier versions of the OS. Only 9% of consumers considering buying a tablet actively prefer an Android tablet — compared with 16% who prefer iOS and 46% who prefer Windows. Barnes & Noble has chosen to emphasize its own brand and user experience on the Nook Color rather than emphasize the Google or Android brands, even though the Nook is built on Android. Amazon may not wish to go that far on the curation spectrum, but it does need to differentiate its flavor of Android from all the rest, and that may come from emphasizing the Amazon experience over the Google one.

Monday, August 29, 2011

PC clone makers can’t match Apple’s cost or its Bill Of Materials (BOM). The way Apple procures parts and subsystems, the way it runs contract manufacturing and stays on top of complicated but delicate distribution logistics is evidence of the company’s aggressive Supply-Chain Management (SCM). Steve – and thus Apple – understands that the channels need to be fed Just So, neither starved nor stuffed.

I found the BOM story interesting and looked up current ultra-portable prices. Who better than Sony in that product category? I went to their site and got this:

A nice MacBook Air competitor starting at $1969. The real thing starts at $1299. Quite a reversal of the old world order and, I hope, a source of satisfaction for Jobs.

Before Google+, your Google identity was really only used on Google sites. But with Google+ and the +1 button, that identity system can extend across the Web -- if you're signed in to Google+ and you +1 a particular Web site, that information can be tracked. That helps Google provide more personalized services (like search results) for you, but could also help with ad targeting.

Schmidt also said that Google believes the Internet will work better if people know that you're a real person rather than a fake person or a dog.

When Hewlett-Packard launched the TouchPad in July, the company had high hopes for its future. It thought that WebOS could catch on with customers, and consumers would respond well to the device’s iPad-like design. But in less than two months, it became clear that wasn’t the case. HP was forced to discontinue the device. Some have criticized HP for discontinuing its tablet so soon. They say that the company should have stuck it out to see if things would turn around. They also suggested that the company should consider offering up a new version of its tablet to try to appeal to those looking for something else. But HP disagreed. And instead, the company decided to end its tablet program altogether. Looking around the tablet space, it’s now clear that other devices might soon follow the TouchPad. Aside from the iPad 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, there isn’t a single device that is performing all that well at retail. It’s about time these tablet makers do something about that. To help them out, we’ve compiled the following list to highlight 10 tablets that are on their way toward joining the TouchPad on the extinction list.

But like many young technology companies that experience early success, it has a problem. Its fortunes are based on a single, highly successful product – in this case something called “virtualisation”, which greatly increases the utilisation rates of corporate servers. Microsoft, smelling blood, is now giving the same software away free of charge to Windows users – a tactic it has used to crush rivals in the past.

Like many software executives before him, that has Mr Maritz racing for his life as he tries to turn VMware into a broader supplier of software for the new world of “cloud” computing. “That won’t carry us forever,” he says of his company’s main cash cow.

As is usual in the excitement of breaking news events, Twitter became home to a lot of misinformation too.

An awe-inspiring photo of “Hurricane Irene approaching North Carolina” began circulating social networks early Saturday evening and was quickly shared by thousands of people. The only problem: the image was actually taken weeks ago in Pensacola, Fla., and had nothing to do with Irene. Still, the photo was viewed 270,000 times on TwitPic, a Twitter image Web site.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

For Apple’s part, until it can find a way to become a prime delivery channel for content, it is unlikely to go beyond the “hobby” of Apple TV. While I can’t see Apple ever getting into the no-margin TV display business, I have no doubt that it could build a set-top box vastly better than the lame Motorola and Cisco products offered by the cable companies and vastly better than TiVo or Google. The problem is that access to the content runs through the cable companies, and I cannot imagine Apple trying to build such a product based on the kludgy CableCARD or its vaporous successor, tru2way. Apple won’t do it until it can do it right, and that will require the cooperation of a very reluctant entertainment industry. It may happen–Apple, for one thing, has a whole lot of money to throw around– but it won’t be easy.

Amazon has already shown that it can beat both Apple and Google to the punch by offering to store customers’ music collections in "lockers" in the cloud. Users can then access their tunes from any computer or Android device while on the move. Amazon’s “Cloud Drive” provides users with five gigabytes of storage for free. All together, that sounds like a pretty nifty way of building an Amazon-based ecosystem—and locking customers into it. Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic former boss and architect of its remarkable self-supporting ecosystem, should be more than a little concerned.

Schmidt told the Edinburgh television festival its lack of success so far was partly because it was a feature designed into televisions, devices which consumers tend to replace only about once every five years.

"We're absolutely committed to staying, to improving Google TV," he said, adding that new companies would be joining existing partners Sony and Logitech for the next version. Logitech makes computer mice, speakers, webcams and keyboards.

"I believe that they're both going to be on board and I believe there are many more coming. Wait shortly for an announcement," he said.

The “Introduction to Databases” course covers database design and the use of database management systems for applications. It includes extensive coverage of the relational model as well as NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases. It also covers XML data including DTDs and XML Schema for validation, and the query and transformation languages XPath, XQuery, and XSLT. The course includes database design in UML, and relational design principles based on dependencies and normal forms. Course material is posted here.

Online intelligence firm Experian Hitwise is reporting that Groupon’s weekly U.S. traffic rates have dropped off by almost 50 percent last week since its peak during the second week of June 2011. Although Hitwise acknowledges that figure represents only web-based traffic but not include mobile or apps traffic.

However, based on the same rules above (web-based only in the U.S.), domestic visits to Groupon’s chief competitor LivingSocial has surged by 27 percent.

He then goes on to explain how in 2003 Jobs praised Salesforce’s “fantastic enterprise application” and advised him to dream bigger and think about the wider “ecosystem”. Salesforce took it at face value and built an app store of sorts dubbed App Exchange. However, they loved the app store term so much that they bought a URL and trademarked it. Benioff was later in the audience when Jobs announced the App Store. Where more than a few sue-happy companies would see a lawsuit opportunity, Benioff went up to Jobs and said, “I’m gonna give you the trademark and the URL because of the help you gave me in 2003.”

That’s 50 percent of all Americans, not just those who say they are online. Six years ago, when Pew first conducted a similar survey, only 5 percent of all adults said they used social sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.

After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.

Back in 2002, Apple was just getting started with the company's retail store initiative, and among the first stores to debut was the venue in Palo Alto on University Avenue. Living in Belmont, not too far north of the shop, I thought I would lazily take a Saturday afternoon and check out the newest Mac laptops. Like any good Mac fan, even if I wasn't exactly in the market to upgrade, I felt it my civic duty to check them out and get familiar. But when I entered the store and glanced past the display of white laptops, I spotted something much more interesting - as Steve Jobs himself was in the store, having a conversation with the store manager. From what I gathered, the pair were talking about contingency plans of what to do if the weather went bad - and how the worst thing you could do was have to shut down the store. The world has heard how Steve got involved in the little nuances of many of the company's products, so it's no surprise the retail store launch was much different.

Benioff says the social media push will help Salesforce nearly quintuple annual sales, to $10 billion, though he sets no date for that goal. Wall Street is optimistic. Today the stock is trading at 821 times last year’s earnings, 6.6 times the tech industry average, according to Bloomberg data. This despite the fact that Salesforce earned just $43.1 million in the second quarter—and actually suffered a small loss if options and other expenses are included. Next quarter, analysts expect the company to lose $6.5 million, in part because of hiring and acquisition expenses. In May, Salesforce paid $340 million for Radian6, which makes software to monitor social media conversations (and is now a part of the Winter ’12 offering). Meanwhile, early social media initiatives aren’t exactly raking in big bucks. Salesforce had to cut the price of the first iteration of Chatter from $50 to $15 per user per month, says Benioff. “The bear story is they’re spending money somewhat like drunken sailors,” says Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS (UBS) who nonetheless rates Salesforce a “buy,” in part because of the social media efforts.

An excerpt from another perspective on what made Steve Jobs successful at Apple 2.0

Suddenly, Jobs was back at Apple. Within a year, he ousted the previous chief executive and regained total control, imposing his creative vision on every Apple product. The result was a long string of hits, and a fair number of misses. There was the overpriced, hard-to-upgrade Cube desktop computer. That was followed by the ROKR, an ill-fated partnership with Motorola Inc. to build a cellphone compatible with Apple’s iTunes music service. But those failures were overshadowed by the massive success of the iMac computer, the iPod music player, the iPhone, and the iPad.

From failure, Jobs had learned valuable lessons. “The old Steve would not have succeeded the way the new Steve did when he was back at Apple,’’ Metcalfe said. “He seemed to have learned about management.’’

Facebook said it already took down threats of violence and other offending material and was working on speeding the process.

“We look forward to meeting with the home secretary to explain the measures we have been taking to ensure that Facebook is a safe and positive platform for people in the UK at this challenging time,’’ the company said in a statement.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

And now we have Jobs’ resignation. But he’s not going away, not signing-up for Apple COBRA benefits, just giving up to Cook his duties as CEO. Jobs will remain an Apple employee and chairman of the board. That makes him what’s called an executive chairman — one who is on the job every day. And that job he’ll be doing every day is overseeing Tim Cook’s execution of the corporate strategy designed by Steve Jobs.

This looks to me like Cook continuing to function in his Chief Operating Officer role. Oh he’ll get a big raise and an even bigger bonus, but my sense is that next week the guy really in charge will still be Steve Jobs. And the Apple board, satisfied that the succession question has been answered and their own fiduciary asses are covered (I suspect this is a big part of it) can go back to sleep.

But it isn’t a long-term solution. Steve Jobs won’t be around forever and a true successor will have to be chosen eventually. For all his administrative skills, Cook can’t fill Jobs’ visionary shoes, so I’d look for another leadership change, maybe tied to the release of Isaacson’s book.

In June we launched the +1 button for websites, making it easier to recommend content across the web. In July, the +1 button crossed 2 billion daily views, and we also made it a lot faster. Today the +1 button appears on more than a million sites, with over 4 billion daily views, and we're extremely excited about this momentum. It's just the beginning, however, and today we're launching two more features that make +1 buttons more useful for users and publishers alike. Sharing with your circles on Google+Clicking the +1 button is a great way to highlight content for others when they search on Google. But sometimes you want to start a conversation right away—at least with certain groups of friends. So beginning today, we're making it easy for Google+ users to share webpages with their circles, directly from the +1 button. Just +1 a page as usual and look for the new "Share on Google+" option. From there you can comment, choose a circle and share.

“I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back. [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

***

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people––as remarkable as the telephone.” [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]

It’s sad to see RIM struggle for a future. Yes, the company has made some gigantic mistakes: it sat smugly on its business phones for far too long, ignoring the public’s obvious love of touch, multimedia and beautiful design. It spent too much time and diverted too many resources trying to come up with its disastrous PlayBook tablet.

But the stellar 9900 shows that when its back is against the wall, RIM can produce winners. This phone is the best BlackBerry RIM has ever produced, but against the gigantic technological and marketing forces of iPhone and Android, it’s a whisper in the wind. Let’s hope that there are enough BlackBerry fans left to support their favorite phone and that the company completes its reboot in time to prevent the 2013 headline, “RIM R.I.P.”

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

“Steve Jobs is on my ‘eternal heroes’ list,’’ said Bob Metcalfe, who founded computer networking giant 3Com Corp. and is now a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham. “He did what he set out to do: create insanely great products. And he did it his way.’’

“He’s the most brilliant software developer and tech business person who’s ever lived,’’ said serial high-tech entrepreneur and angel investor John Landry of Wayland. “He’s taken his vision and created the most valuable technology company in the world.’’

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Facebook hit a new milestone in June this year - the site touched a trillion page views from the 870 million* people who visited Facebook that month. Check this infographic to get an idea of how big a trillion – or a million million – is.

[*] Officially, Facebook has 750+ million users but the number of unique visitors who flock Facebook every month is much higher because certain section of the site – Facebook Pages and Profiles for example – are open to non-users as well.

Note that blogspot.com (Google’s Blogger hosting service) is #7 in the list (sorted by unique visitor count) – an excerpt from the Google June 2011 list:

Perhaps you’ll soon be able to shorten your life by watching TV on a new Amazon Android tablet

Amazon.com appears poised to throw down the gauntlet in the fast-growing market for movies and TV shows streamed over the Internet.

A new report says the Seattle company is expected to bid for Hulu, a privately owned video website that makes money by selling ads and subscriptions for online access to popular TV shows such as "Glee" and "30 Rock."

If it’s the end of the world as we know it, RIM customers may be more likely to feel fine

BlackBerry e-mail messages were delivered as usual after an earthquake struck Virginia today while calls failed, a potential boon to manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd. as it tries to win back lost market share.

A candidate for the next round of Facebook privacy-related setting options

Ticketmaster, the event ticketing property of Live Nation, is enhancing its interactive seat maps Tuesday so that ticket buyers and event-goers can see where their Facebook friends are sitting, and tag themselves into their seats.

With the upgrade, Facebook members can now connect their accounts to view a Facebook-infused event seat map that highlights where friends at sitting with miniature Facebook flags.

Apple- and Internet-based market acceleration, although the trend is not limited to devices

Some analysts trace the origin of this blockbuster-or-bust mentality to Apple. Each release of the company’s popular iPads and iPhones crosses over into being a mainstream media event. Al Hilwa, an analyst at the research firm IDC, described the accelerated lifecycle of high-end hardware as “Darwinian.”

“There’s a level of desperation from anyone whose name is not Apple,” said Mr. Hilwa.

Drunken revelers rejoice: Facebook will now let you decide whether your friends can attach your name to a photo before it is circulated.

Currently, your friends can add your name to a photo on Facebook without your consent or knowledge. You can remove it later, but only after lots of others may have seen the embarrassing shots. Now, you can insist on preapproval.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

If either Oracle or IBM cared about a document-oriented, unstructured data platform, they could acquire other companies (e.g., MarkLogic!?) for a lot less than $10B. If they care about enterprise search, they could buy one of many small vendors in that space or put (more) wood behind Lucene and Solr. They already have offerings in web content management and e-discovery. The key point is that if you de-construct Autonomy, Oracle and IBM either already have or could easily buy each of the pieces. Buying them all-in-one at discount? Maybe. At $10B for the starting bid? Methinks not.

“The number of people that could pay at least $55 billion is extremely small,” Kelleher, an analyst at Argus in New York, said in a telephone interview. “Most people feel the value of all these assets is going to go down.”

Fiduciary Trust’s Mullaney says Hewlett-Packard, which has lost almost half its value since Hurd left a year ago, must consider all options to help shareholders recoup their money.

“You can pretty much take a look at the stock price, look at when Hurd exited, and then look at now,” he said. “It’s pretty straightforward. Something’s not working.”

This idea stems from a New York Post story Sunday, which asserts that the sell-off in the stock last week has “put the world’s largest tech company in a vulnerable position and may make it an Oracle takeover target.” The piece says that “one source close to the situation” thinks Ellison is ready to pounce, and that a deal is “inevitable” if HP’s share price keeps dropping.

Monday, August 22, 2011

“… price the TouchPad better” as in probably losing hundreds of dollars per unit? Gee, why didn’t HP think of that approach sooner?

But just after HP announced plans to put WebOS out of its misery, discontinuing operations for devices running on it, the operating system has shown a new luster. TouchPads are flying off the shelves at fire sale prices and WebOS application developers are the subjects of at least one company's hot pursuit. It almost seems as if HP, had it been able to price the TouchPad better and harness the enthusiasm of its developers, could have turned WebOS into a contender.

Some agencies, especially those that deal with less confidential information, have been quick to adopt the model. In the first six months of Mr. Kundra’s policy, the Agriculture Department has moved about 46,000 employee accounts and is in the process of adding 120,000. The cloud can help speed along technology projects, said Chris Smith, the agency’s information chief.

But other departments, especially defense and state, are proceeding more slowly. Teri Takai, the chief information officer for the Defense Department, said her agency’s use of cloud computing would be limited for the near future to keep confidential data within the military’s advanced security systems.

Check the link below for more details; looks like the TouchPad will briefly be on the best-seller list after all…

Best Buy has resumed sales of the HP TouchPad after getting the message loud and clear that consumers believe the price is right, even if the tablet has been discontinued and its operating system is uncertain.

Over the weekend, HP marked down the 16GB version to $99 and the 32 GB version to $149, representing a price cut of $300 or more.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market.

But while Motorola may have pushed for the high fee in exchange, the company must put up with a lot in the meantime. The acquisition agreement sharply regulates how Motorola can run its business in ways beyond normal deal terms.

It prohibits Motorola from:

1) terminating any employee at or above the level of corporate vice president without consulting Google

2) increasing salaries and benefits for employees at or above the level of corporate vice president by more than 5 percent in any year period

Computer makers are expected to ship only about 4 percent more PCs this year than last year, according to IDC, a research firm. Tablets, in contrast, are flying off store shelves. Global sales are expected to more than double this year to 24.1 million, according to Forrester Research. More than two-thirds of those tablets, however, are sold by Apple. Sales of its iPad pulled in $9 billion in just the first half of the year, or 30 percent more than all of Dell’s consumer PC business in the same period. The joke in Silicon Valley is that there is no tablet market, only an iPad market. (That was also true of Apple and the iPod market.)

The other observation that is no joke: Apple is the only maker with strong PC growth. Spending on desktops and laptops grew 16 percent in the latest quarter, while Dell’s consumer product sales increased 1 percent.

But if there is anything that can catch a little consumer attention, it's a price cut. And the HP TouchPad is receiving what is possibly one of the most dramatic price cuts in all of tablet computer history -- down to $99.99 in Canada.

Well, not all of Canada, but the $100 TouchPad, with 16 gigabytes of memory and Wi-Fi only, is available in our neighbor to the north's Best Buy and Future Shop stores (Future Shop is a retail chain owned by Best Buy). The 32-gigabyte model of the TouchPad is selling in either store for $149.99.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Check the article link below for more details on how authentic identity is conducive to constructive comment-based collaboration

The logic is simple. If online posters are tied to their real life identities, they will be more responsible with their comments.

So far more than 300,000 sites have decided to take them up on the offer, and the majority of publishers report an increase in the quality of comments. (In general, sites that offer Facebook comments report a decrease in the raw numbers but an increase in the quality.)

There are reasons for the self-congratulation though. Lenovo pushed up PC shipments more than 23 per cent during the quarter as the global market moved up 2.7 per cent – the ninth consecutive quarter it outgrew the market.

Big Blue last week celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the PC but one of its engineers behind the original design reckoned systems have seen their best days and are "going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl record..."

Chuanzhi disagrees: "Our results show that Lenovo's acquisition of the IBM PC business has become a success. In future quarters, you will see clearly that we will take what we've learned from this acquisition and apply that knowledge towards our joint venture with NEC in Japan and our acquisition of Medion in Germany."

Evidently the Google+ honeymoon is over, and it’s time to start focusing on fundamental Facebook features again

Messenger lets groups of Facebook users communicate with one another in the moment even if they're using different communication technologies—for example, with one person using instant messaging, another text, and a third e-mail. Messenger taps into Facebook's vast supply of data about contacts and connections, including users' e-mail addresses, instant-message handles, and phone numbers.

Facebook already offers a feature called Groups, which lets people communicate over time about specific topics of interest, and one called Events, which lets them plan social occasions. But these aren't much good when groups want to communicate on the spur of the moment. "Until recently, you couldn't do it in real time," says Lucy Zhang, one of the engineers who built Messenger. Zhang is a cofounder of Beluga, a startup that created group-messaging tools and that was acquired by Facebook in March. Beluga's technology became the core of Messenger.

Autonomy's products enable companies to do things like analyze transcripts from call centers; discover which sales strategies work best; and process troves of emails and other documents to match what is being said and done against a company's legal responsibilities. Such analysis can be automated using software that looks for certain things automatically, or performed manually by a person entering queries, and then sifting through the results themselves.

Andrews says business and technology companies are beginning to realize that both types of analysis could offer much more than conventional approaches, which rely on so-called "structured" data--such as a spreadsheet organized into labelled columns. "Business analytics is about structured data, like spreadsheets," says Andrews, "Autonomy does an exceptional job at analyzing unstructured data, which may prove even more valuable."

One slight hitch in the survey is that there appears to be no consensus on the definition of "big data." According to Revolution Analytics, some data scientists consider the "big data" threshold to be a terabyte, some say it's a petabyte, and some consider "big data" to be "just above what can be reasonably managed for any given job."

Hewlett-Packard announced Thursday plans to spend some $10.25 billion in cash to acquire Autonomy, the United Kingdom-based software and services company.

Given that HP’s cash reserves currently total $12.9 billion, the deal represents a major monetary outlay that will leave the company’s wallet significantly lighter than it has been for many years. Why is HP is taking such a huge leap?

HP’s activities yesterday were definitely not good case studies in corporate strategy or public relations

HP made the announcement that it was ceasing to make webOS hardware, but neglected to get a hardware licensing deal in place before doing so. This seemed to drive home the point that webOS was dead in the water, when in fact it is very much alive and was never the issue. It was the hardware that was killing HP’s OS.

If HP had announced a licensing deal before the discontinuation of the hardware, the news would have gone much differently today. There would be no stories about the ‘death of webOS’, an OS that many of us thought was just starting to get good.

Competing with IBM and Oracle should be almost as much fun for HP as competing with Apple was. HP would probably be trying to acquire SAP at this point, if it weren’t worth nearly as much as HP is (market caps of ~$60B and $61B, respectively, at the moment). Update ~5 hours later: make that ~$46.7B mkt cap, for HP; see HP Dives to 6-Year Low (WSJ); perhaps SAP should buy HP…

Hearkening back to his two-decade career at SAP AG, Apotheker plans to spin off Hewlett Packard’s personal-computer business and dive deeper into business software with the $10.3 billion purchase of Autonomy Corp.

With the plans announced yesterday, Apotheker, 57, makes good on pledges to expand in cloud computing and aims to challenge Oracle and International Machines Corp. in more profitable products aimed at corporations. Business software delivered a 19 percent operating margin last quarter, more than triple the amount for the PC unit due to be jettisoned.

When the TouchPad launched, and subsequently floundered out of the gate, Apotheker had what he needed. He landed Autonomy and it was set. HP wasn’t going to be the next Apple. They were going to be the next IBM.

Not IBM, the PC juggernaut, mind you — IBM the company that cut loose the PC hardware division and focused on data and enterprise. That’s what so jarring about today’s news: HP just did a full stop and then a 180 before our very eyes. Apple and IBM both resurrected themselves in recent years, but each did it in opposite ways. The Apple plan didn’t work for HP, Apotheker decided. He now clearly believes the IBM plan will.

[…]

Something else to consider: when HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion last year, the world was a different place. These days, companies are paying $4.5 billion for a group of patents. Google is paying $12.5 billion for Motorola, a large portion is which is also for patents. Along with Palm and webOS, HP got Palm’s 1,500+ patents last year, as they emphasized to us at the time of the sale.

If those patents are as important in the mobile space as some believe, they alone could be worth more than the $1.2 billion Palm sale price now. If HP can flip those for north of that price, the whole acquisition won’t look like nearly as much of a disaster as it does right now.

Perhaps for the patents; probably not to make another run at establishing WebOS as a device platform

CFO Cathie Lesjak largely reiterated Apotheker’s dual message, but added some grim financial numbers to the mix, indicating that the webOS unit was the cause of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and threatened to cause an even bigger loss next quarter had the company continued to move forward with its strategy.

Not that long ago, of course, HP saw all kinds of options for the software, promising to put it on all manner of PCs and printers, not to mention tablets and phones.

Just what HP is trying to do with webOS in terms of selling it or licensing it is not clear. Richard Kerris, the former Apple executive brought in by HP to head developer outreach efforts, held out hope a buyer might be found.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Congrats to Louis Gray; I hope the new job won’t leave him with less time for blogging/Buzz/Google+/etc…

Louis Gray was among the first people I met in my early blogging career. Indeed, he was probably the first blogger I exchanged emails with and the first to publish my full name while I was still writing semi-anonymously. Since then, he’s moved on to become one of the most recognizable faces in the social media space and, after quitting his original job as marketing director at BlueArc, launched a succesful consulting firm and joined recommendation engine my6sense as its VP of marketing. That’s not a bad career, but on Monday, Gray is leaving both my6sense and his consulting career behind to join Google and focus on product marketing and evangelism for the Google+ team.

RIP, Palm. HP acquired Palm for ~$1.2B in April, 2010, and all that remains is a device OS that not even HP itself is going to use. Perhaps we’ll next see Apple or Google buy HP’s collection of Palm patents… I’m also guessing HP PSG EVP (and former Palm CEO) Todd Bradley may be “pursuing other opportunities” right about now. Also see H.P. Plans Big Shift Toward Business Customers (NYT)

HP today commented on the recent announcement by Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU.L). HP confirms that it is in discussions with Autonomy regarding a possible offer for the company.

HP also reported that it plans to announce that its board of directors has authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG). HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction.

In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

Big changes expected for HP, which appears to be bringing its IBM business model emulation strategy to full fruition (e.g., moving to services, dumping its PC business, and acquiring mature software companies). Probably time to update the PC 30th anniversary timeline HP recently co-sponsored.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's biggest computer maker, is expected to announce a spinoff of its PC business and is close to a $10 billion deal to acquire U.K. software firm Autonomy Corp., said people familiar with the matter.

H-P may announce its plans as early as Thursday, the people said. The company was expected to report its latest quarterly earnings after the U.S. markets close.

What is needed is a truly patriotic position, one that would explain to voters, whatever their sympathies, that there is no American nation without an American middle class, and no American middle class without an American government that provides the essential services that allow people to move up in a globalized world. Whatever one thinks of the Tea Party’s Orwellian references to our revolutionary heritage, there’s no danger of a return to an eighteenth century when Ohio did not even exist, and the midwestern economy depended on the Indian flint arrowheads that today pass beneath the blades of the massive high-tech combines. The real danger is that we will move briskly forward to national non-existence, misunderstanding the plainest lessons of our own past along the way. By the time the costs of right-wing anarchism reach the truly privileged, it will be far too late for everyone else. If we don’t find a way to adapt own national thinking to global reality before then, all we can look forward to is leaving a trace: like fossils, or arrowheads, or the mammoth tusk that hangs on my grandmother’s porch.

Google has ideas about what you might want to see online—even when you're not doing a search. It's offering its suggestions through a service called Google Related, which works as an extension for the company's Chrome Web browser or for the Google toolbar. The company explains:

Whenever you're navigating to a new page, Google Related will look for interesting related content and, if available, display it in a bar at the bottom of your page. Google Related can display categories such as videos, news articles, maps, reviews, images, web sites and more. To preview a listed item or see additional items, just use your mouse to hover over different categories in the bar. For example, when you hover over a video link, the video pops up in a preview box and you can play the video directly on the page.

This is destined to become a fascinating information responsibility case study

The Justice Department is investigating whether the nation’s largest credit ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, according to two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews.

The investigation into Standard & Poor's began before the company cut the United States’ triple-A credit rating this month.

Give it a few weeks and then look for the Bold in the sale bin, next to the HP TouchPad

The BlackBerry Bold may be out of the smartphone game before it even gets into it.

T-Mobile USA said today that it will sell RIM's latest flagship phone, the BlackBerry Bold 9900, for $299.99--after a $50 mail-in rebate. That follows the Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel variant of the smartphone, the Bold 9930, which will retail for $249.99 at both carriers.

But when the bar for a vast majority of smartphones--even high-end ones such as Apple'siPhone--is set at $200, and you go over, that's a problem.

When asked if Google could compete with Apple by offering tablets running Android software, Mr. Noland said, “Unless a product comes out that is half the price of the iPad, and comes with good enough bells of whistles, then its highly unlikely.”

The survey also found that a 83 percent of tablet owners still plan to buy a PC computer in addition to their tablet. This means that tablet cannibalization of the PC computer is taking place at a very slow pace.

Opposition to regulation and skepticism about climate change have become tenets of Republican orthodoxy, but they are embraced with extraordinary intensity this year because of the faltering economy, high fuel prices, the Tea Party passion for smaller government and an activist Republican base that insists on strict adherence to the party’s central agenda.

But while attacks on the E.P.A., climate-change science and environmental regulation more broadly are surefire applause lines with many Republican primary audiences, these views may prove a liability in the general election, pollsters and analysts say. The American people, by substantial majorities, are concerned about air and water pollution, and largely trust the E.P.A., national surveys say.

For a private equity firm that’s looking for the cheapest way to get online, AOL Inc. is trading for 57 cents on the dollar.

The Internet pioneer spun off from Time Warner Inc. in 2009 plunged to a record low last week after cutting this year’s profit forecast because of slowing growth in display advertising sales. With its market capitalization reduced to $1.3 billion from a peak of $3.1 billion last year, New York-based AOL is now the cheapest relative to its net assets of any U.S. Web company with a value of more than $500 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

[…]

With AOL trading at a 43 percent discount, the company may now attract private equity buyers that can still extract $1.5 billion in cash out of the access business within three years, according to B. Riley & Co.

If it weren’t already pretty obvious that Jive Software had begun the long march toward an initial public offering, then there can be no doubt after today. Bloomberg News scored tips from three sources — my guess is chatty bankers — that Jive has tapped Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to lead its IPO, with UBS and Citigroup also in on the deal.

[…]

The way Bloomberg tells it, Jive is being valued at $1 billion and would offer a stake worth 10 to 20 percent in the company in the IPO. And research firm Gartner pegs its annual revenue at $70 million. It’s the leader in the social enterprise software field, which is all about making the workplace more collaborative by making office applications more social, a la Facebook, Twitter and the like. (In fact one of Jive’s newest directors is Jonathan Heiliger, VP of technical operations at Facebook.)

This larger, thinner version of the seven-inch tablet Samsung rushed to market last year is superior to the original in every way. Indeed, if it had come quicker to the market, Samsung might now be neck and neck with Apple in tablet sales.

The first really good Android tablet, the Xoom from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., looks and feels like a cinderblock next to the Galaxy Tab. Indeed, the Samsung tablet is slimmer and lighter than the newest iPad, with a textured plastic back that seems to welcome your fingers.